Comic Configurations and Types in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre

Goethe himself ranked the Lehrjahre among the `most incalculable productions,'1 yet critics have more often complained that the final sum is drawn all-too-neatly. 2 The ending of the novel, where all the loose ends of the plot are tied up in a flurry of disclosures leading to three marriages, has been felt to be inorganic – something appropriate to a comic novel or even a Trivialroman, but very much out of place in the progenitor of a new and complex historical genre. Emil Staiger has gone so far as to suggest a failure of nerve on Goethe's part, a victory of convenience over aesthetic judgment: `Mit den Vermahlungen, die am Schlus bevorstehen, fallen wir vollends in die Romanschablone einer vorklassischen Literatur zuruck. Goethe wollte fertig werden und lies es bei einer Fabel bewenden, die allzu deutlich die Spuren einer klugen Disposition verrat.' 3 Yet comic elements are to be found not merely at the conclusion, but throughout the Lehrjahre; both the extent and the importance of

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